Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/257

 No man could have had a truer perception of the conditions among which he had been cast than Dugald Maclean, no man could have had a stronger grasp of certain forces, or of the alchemy transmuting them into things undreamt of; no man could have had a bolder outlook upon the whole amazing phantasmagoria evolved by the cosmic dust out of the wonders within itself. The Duke had the cynicism of the materialist; the man who faced him now had the vision of him who sees too much.

The Duke, with a great air and a courtesy which was second nature, begged his visitor to forgive his being as he was.

Sir Dugald, with a mechanical formula and a mechanical smile, responded with a ready sympathy. But while their conventional phrases flowed, each marked the other narrowly, like a pair of strange brigands colloguing for the first time on the side of a mountain. It was as if each knew the other for a devil of a fellow, yet not quite such a devil of a fellow as he judges himself to be.

Efficiency was the watchword of Maclean. There was no beating about the bush. He knew what he wanted and had come to see that he got it. In a cool, aloof, rather detached way he lost no time in putting forward the demand he had made at a former meeting.

"But one has been led to infer from your speeches," said the Duke, bluntly, "and the facts of your career, that you stand for an order of things very different from those obtaining here."

"Up to a point, yes," was the ready answer. "But only up to a point. In order to govern efficiency it is wise to aim at a centralization of power. The happiest communities are those in which power is in the hands